264 MILLIONAIRES IN GERMANY AND BRITAIN 133 3 1st January 1942, evening Former German colonies—The British plutocracy—The psychological moment to stop the war—Possibility of collaboration with France—The era of Italian Fascism— The birth of the SA—Two worlds cheek by jowl—The fossils of the Italian Court—Venice, Naples, Rome, Florence—The third Power. The German colonies suffered from a lack of skilled labour. That explains why there was no possibility for big investments. Yet they were territories populated by three or four million natives. In India, the English invested huge sums : railways and other methods of transport, factories and port installations. If each of three hundred and eighty million Indians merely buys a reel of cotton every year, imagine what a volume of business that adds up to! Cotton goods were at first manufactured in England. It's only little by little that factories were built in India herself. It's the capitalist notion of business that led to that result. People thought that the saving on transport costs and the employment of less expensive labour would increase the margin of profit. For a capitalist, it would be a crime to waste a crumb. What was the result? To-day England has an army of two million and a half unemployed. There are in Great Britain more than four hundred tax-payers with a yearly income of more than a million pounds. In Germany, only the Kaiser, Henckel von Donnersmarck and Thurn-and-Taxis had incomes of three to four million marks. A man who had a fortune of a million marks was already regarded as a nabob. But for the first World War, the English would have gone on enjoying the blessings of the Victorian Age. What is Libya to Great Britain? Another desert. Every war comes to an end at the moment when one of the belligerents decides he must cut costs. In this war it's the English who'll throw in the sponge. Strategic successes can make no difference to the Empire's precarious situation. England can continue to

GERMANY'S FRENCH POLICY 265 be viable only if she links herself to the Continent. She must be able to defend her imperial interests within the framework of a continental organisation. It's only on this condition that she'll keep her Empire. But nothing's more difficult than to come down from a pedestal. Thus Austria clung until 1866 to the fiction of supremacy-—and then it took her another seventy years to learn from the facts. British military prestige has been re-established by the conquest of Benghazi. It was the psychological moment to put an end to the war. But Churchill had Russia at the back of his mind—and he didn't see that, if Russia were to triumph over Germany, Europe would at once come under the hegemony of a Great Power. Too many Jews had an interest in seeing events take this turn. The Jew is so stupid that he himself saws through the branch on which he's sitting. In 1919 a Jewess wrote in the Bayrischer Kurier: "What Eisner's doing now will recoil upon our heads." A rare case of foresight. France remains hostile to us. She contains, in addition to her Nordic blood, a blood that will always be foreign to us. In addition to Paris, which is more spontaneous in its reactions, she has the clerical and masonic South. In imitation of Talleyrand in 1815, the French try to profit by our moments of weakness to get the greatest possible advantage from the situation. But with me they won't succeed in their plans. There's no possibility of our making any pact with the French before we've definitely ensured our power. Our policy, at this moment, must consist in cleverly playing off one lot against the other. There must be two Frances. Thus, the French who have compromised themselves with us will find it to their own interests that we should remain in Paris as long as possible. But our best protection against France will be for us to maintain a strong friendship, lasting for centuries, with Italy. Unlike France, Italy is inspired by political notions that are close to ours. I was thinking of the Italian delegation I received yesterday.